Guiding Questions

Focus your Investigation

Each of the following questions is intended to guide your thought as you read the information in the site. You can click on a question to reveal a short answer and a link to the appropriate portion of the website.

A. Scientists in older times were forced to "get lucky" with their explorations. Today they use advances in biotechnological techniques to test large numbers of genes and proteins for some response to find those worthy of further study. This is explored in Identifying Genes for Research.

A. Chemotherapy has deadly poisonous effects on all cells that are dividing, this causes it to mostly targets cells that are dividing rapidly, such as cancer, while other cells are sometimes caught in the crossfire. Chemotherapy can be improved greatly by any method which allows lower doses to be more effective against cancer, or which decrease the chance that the treatment will effect non-cancer cells.. This is discussed in How do we Treat Cancer? and Protein Targets.

A. The contents of the cell can be changed by manipulating the normal process the cell uses to create proteins from genes. The cell converts DNA > RNA > Protein in a fashion that is called the "central dogma" of biology. Blocking a step, or adding to a step, allows manipulation of the exact features of the cell at a protein level. Discussed in RNA Interference.

A. Many scientific experiments in biology and medicine are performed on Model Organisms, such as mice or cancer cell lines, that are close enough to humans for research purposes. Because they are not human experimental subjects however, the results must be carefully tested for multiple more complicated interactions in humans, long before potential drugs are released. These topics are covered in Modeling Cancer and Drug development.